We build pools in Wilson, North Carolina, roughly thirty-five miles west of Greenville at the far end of I-587. Wilson was for decades the centre of the bright leaf tobacco trade, at one point the largest such market anywhere, and the money that came through the warehouses built the housing stock that still defines the older parts of the city. There is a whirligig park downtown that is worth the drive on its own.
The generous lots are the good news and the complication
Wilson's established neighborhoods have larger lots and more mature canopy than most eastern North Carolina cities of its size. Big oaks, big pecans, deep back yards. It is a genuinely pleasant place to put a pool and a genuinely awkward place to get equipment into one.
The practical consequence is the same as in the older parts of Greenville and Tarboro. A one-piece fiberglass shell needs a clear route from the street and room for a crane or a large excavator to work. On these lots that route often does not exist without taking trees down, which most owners rightly refuse to do. That points to gunite, which arrives through a hose, or to a vinyl liner pool whose panels come in by hand.
Shade also changes the pool. Heavy canopy keeps water cold well into June, drops leaf litter constantly, and drives chlorine demand up through the organic load. That affects skimmer placement, filter sizing and whether a heater makes sense. See equipment installation.
Wilson ground
This is upper Coastal Plain country, generally better drained than the river bottomlands downstream near Greenville and Grifton. Well-drained sandy loam is common, which makes excavation predictable and reduces the amount of groundwater engineering needed.
It is not universal. There are low flats and old drainage lines where the seasonal high water table comes close to the surface, and those need the same measures we use everywhere in this region: a hydrostatic relief valve in the pool floor, stone rather than sand around the structure, and a dewatering standpipe on genuinely wet lots. What we look for on the site walk is where water stands after a heavy rain.
The I-587 connection
US 264 between Wilson and Greenville was federally approved as Interstate 587 and signed in June 2022, running 37 miles from I-95 and I-795 in Wilson County to the NC 11 interchange in Greenville, across Wilson, Greene and Pitt counties. Before that, Greenville was one of the largest cities in the country without an interstate.
For us that is a clean thirty-five minute run, which is why Wilson is inside our normal service area with no travel charge, along with Farmville at the midpoint.
Older pools, and what they need
Wilson has a substantial stock of inground pools dating from the sixties onward. The common projects here are replaster on gunite shells due for their second or third finish, liner replacement on vinyl pools where the steel panels also need attention at the bottom, and deck replacement where thirty years of settling backfill has taken the concrete down with it.
Two code items come up on nearly every older Wilson pool we open up: drain covers that predate the federal Virginia Graeme Baker Pool and Spa Safety Act standard, and bonding that is partial or absent. Both get corrected during renovation, and both are cheap at that moment and expensive later. See renovation and remodeling.
Permits come from the City of Wilson or Wilson County. State requirements are constant across North Carolina: the barrier at least 48 inches high with self-closing, self-latching gates, compliant drain covers, and the equipotential bonding grid required by Article 680. Projects costing $40,000 or more require a general contractor license under General Statute 87-1, a threshold that rose from $30,000 on October 1, 2023.
What we build
Nearby towns
Questions people ask before they build
Will I have to take down trees to build a pool in Wilson?
Sometimes, but far less often than people fear. The trees that have to go are the ones directly in the pool footprint or whose roots would undermine the structure. Trees that only block equipment access can often be worked around by choosing a construction method that does not require a delivery route, such as gunite or vinyl liner rather than a one-piece fiberglass shell.
Is the water table a problem in Wilson?
Less than downstream. Wilson is upper Coastal Plain and generally better drained than the river bottomland around Greenville and Grifton. There are still low flats where the seasonal high water table comes close to the surface, so it gets checked, but it is less often the constraint here.
How long is the drive from Greenville?
About thirty-five minutes on I-587, which was signed as an interstate in 2022. Wilson is well inside our service area and carries no travel charge.
What usually needs fixing on a 1970s Wilson pool?
Interior finish, drain covers, bonding and equipment, in roughly that order of visibility and the reverse order of importance. Old flat drain covers that predate the current federal standard and missing or partial bonding are the two safety items we find most often, and both are inexpensive to correct while other work is already open.